Ivy
My cousin and I watched this awful movie on Lifetime called Walking the Halls. I call it awful because the “suspenseful” ending was so obvious to me as soon as I began to watch the movie. We tuned in an hour late only because there was nothing else on television at 1:30 a.m.
The plot: a 17-year-old girl committed suicide because naked pictures of her were sent to her classmates and some school officials and she loses a scholarship to a college for the next year.
The story is sad, but the acting is worse. The mother’s investigation of her daughters suicide is long and overdrawn.
The ending of the movie was beyond cheesy. The girl’s friend arranged an assembly. If I was supposed to be moved by this part I’d at least hope that Lifetime could fill half of the seats in the auditorium for the movies purpose. The friend gave a speech and students stood up one-by-one and put their cell phones into a bin on the stage.
What? This isn’t some DO NOT Text while driving campaign. I don’t see the point of that. Won’t all the students go back and pick up their iPhones and Android phones?
“I’m sorry but my mom would kill me,” I’d reply as I go back on stage after the assembly to retrieve my phone.
I’ve been thinking a lot about suicide and bullying. I don’t plan on killing myself, but with all the news coverage about bullying and suicide – “What should be done?” “Should the kids who bully go to jail?” Etc.
I was bullied in middle school and in high school. Matter-of-fact, it got so bad in high school that my guidance counselor called in my father and tried to persuade him to transfer me to another school in another district. My father wouldn’t have any of that. He raised a strong black woman, as I always put it, and no one could hurt me.
I went to church with a young man who committed suicide years later, a family member of mine attempted suicide, and we recently had a near scare with a close friend of mine… So I’m not far from the issue. I know it’s real. I don’t want to make light of it.
I want to teach my children that they are strong. They can endure anything that life throws at them. They may not like it, but life has its ups and downs. Everything I just said sounds a little cliché, but I think what helped me through these past years, and this rough patch in my life, is some kind of inner strength. I’m not sure where it is inside of me or how it got there, but I know it’s there.
There are always people who are worse off than you. There will always be people who may be better off than you. If you fail and give up we will never know if you could or couldn’t succeed. I’ll always take the chance, stay strong and keep fighting. I am not a quitter. My parents didn’t raise a quitter, my grandfather didn’t spend his whole life working for me to quit, my ancestors didn’t endure slavery and the Jim Crow south so I could quit. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X didn’t die so I could quit. No! Times may be rough but this is not the end. I refuse to take the easy way out.
That’s my spiel. I hate suicide. I still believe that at times demons take over the mind and convince people that dying is the better option; it’s that or they’re on medication, clinically depressed or punks.
I’m no punk.
This post was originally published on January 19, 2012
